Then We Shall See, Face to Face
by asphalt-pirate
Summary: An interlude in the plot of DC. Two halves are reunited briefly, but the fit of the two pieces is yet imperfect. Please R&R (Corrected some mistakes and renamed the piece.)


Then We Shall See, Face to Face

A Fan's Story based upon the film and novelization of:

Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal

By: Morgen Stern - 2004

Some where in an outcropping of bare, sandy rock, still warm from the daytime rays of the triple suns of Thra even this far into the night, a twisted, shuffling creature looked down upon a camp of creatures on the grassy plain below, and whimpered softly in his suffering and loneliness. skekSil had never been so very alone before, not in his entire existence as he was now... He didn't even have the hated company of his fellow Skeksis to distract himself from the gnawing emptiness, the strange, wretched feeling that something vital had been ripped away from him, unfairly, by force. Something precious had been stolen...  
  
If he'd had the tears in his dry, spindly body to cry he would have, would have wept bitter tears for his own unfortunate fate, for the desertion and abandonment he felt, even more profound than the alienation from the others in the Castle. ...He did not admit this to himself, however, and blamed all his pain upon his fall from grace as the Lord Chamberlain of the Skeksis Court, and nothing more.  
  
It had become more difficult to keep up that lie, however... Ever since he'd laid eyes upon the Gelfling creatures earlier into the night, seen how beautiful and vibrant and full of life, full of courage in the face of the Garthim and of his own horror that they were... He had known that constant bitterness even more sharply than he had ever before, that dreaded aloneness and vile hatred when he had come to their "rescue," and had seen only terrified hatred in their eyes before they'd fled.  
  
As vain as he and all the others were, skekSil was well aware just how ugly his kind were, how twisted and putrid their forms, and that they only ornamented themselves so ostentatiously to hide that hideousness from themselves and others... But even in the heat of benevolence, appearing before them as savior in rags and tatters he had not been able to illicit even a moment of pause for wonder or pity...  
  
True, the act had not been unselfish. It had been nothing but a ruse to try and gain their trust. Eventually he would have lured them to their deaths and used them to restore himself to his own former position and hopefully even put him in better favor with the other Skeksis, but he had put himself in harms way for them, he had not known, not entirely, that the Garthim would still respect his command... He could have been killed, and he might die still, alone and rejected by every creature upon the face of Thra.  
  
skekSil covered his draconic head in his bony hands, closing his small eyes tightly as he tried to shut out such thoughts, tried not to hear the easy snoring of the large nomadic beasts below him, the pack of eight or nine or so strange creatures sharing one another's company in their dreams. How he envied even the simplest of field beasts for the comforts they could lend to one another...  
  
So wrapped up in his own pain was the exiled Chamberlain that he did not even hear the labored shuffling of some great creature approaching him from behind. Not until the low, resonant voice spoke, so softly beside him, did skekSil start and turn to notice he'd been joined.  
  
"And so, you too have been cast out from the Castle..."  
  
skekSil dropped his hands and whirled to look upon the speaker, gasping softly and then sneering bitterly as he saw by the feeble light of the Dying Sun the face of the urRu that had settled himself beside the Skeksis. "You!!!" His voice was shrill with accusation, and he took a sweeping step back away from the other. "Your kind has not been seen in these parts, not for a thousand trine!" The baleful eyes of the Mystic did not argue with what skekSil had said, though they did not seem to acknowledge the cause for alarm. After a pause that became uncomfortably drawn, skekSil settled slightly and spoke again, less harshly, though hardly pleasant. "And I suppose that's the rest of you down there..."  
  
urSol nodded slowly, and again the envy welled up inside the Skeksis, a hatred more fierce than any other he knew and he turned his back upon the urRu suddenly, raising his voice once again. "Then what are you doing here? Get back down with your own kind!"  
  
Once again, the silence stretched and skekSil heard no sound of movement come from the Mystic. Strangely, he was not angered by urSol's inaction, and rather than shouting again he simply settled himself down upon the ground, seating himself with his back still to the other. It was the nearest he had been to urSol in ages, ages he could easily enumerate to himself and that thought made him shiver softly, despite the heat still wafting from the sandstone. After a moment of silence had stretched again, the thoughts teaming now inside his addled skull made the sense of suffering well even more strongly than they had before, and he began to snuffle softly, silently blaming it on the idea that he was stooping to remaining in a Mystic's company. Their banishment from the Crystal Castle had been even more shameful than his own.  
  
As if the other had seen in upon his thoughts, urSol spoke up quietly again and asked, "And why did they send you away, skekSil? Why are you no longer there in the Castle...?" Or maybe the damned creature was simply still continuing with his own thought line from when he had arrived. skekSil wouldn't have been at all surprised, considering what long thinkers the urRu tended to be.  
  
At first he determined not to even answer his reluctantly kept companion, but a desire for pity quickly outstripped his need to protect his pride and he began to speak. "Damned skekUng..." he sulked. "Brute. He seized the throne as Emperor, it was MY place as the Royal Chamberlain, I was meant to be the next in line, for nearly a thousand trine I had been groomed to rule, but he stole the throne from me and banished me from the palace... They took my robes..."  
  
"Your quests for power never have brought you anything but misery, have they...?" It was not really a question, and skekSil sneered again and turned his reptilian gaze back toward the Mystic. "Don't talk to me about failed quests, Spit-head." He barely remembered what he spoke of himself, but from the same place that rose that terrible loneliness came the knowledge that urSol had no room to speak upon such things.  
  
The urRu's sorrowful gaze became pained, even more deeply than before and with a few ponderous steps he shuffled closer to the Skeksis, coming up beside him once again. He knew the fear and defeat weighing upon the other now was great, sent from the Castle, skekSil would not be able to participate in the rituals that brought the Skeksis their long life and coveted power. Lingering upon this point would only be cruel to him. "...You are right... We did not mean for things to happen this way at all..."  
  
skekSil's gaze was still fixed upon the other and the accusation deepened with the Mystic's words. "You would have seen us eradicated. You would have preserved only yourselves and reaped our doom! You still would, that's why you've sent the Gelfling. We should have known that you would harbor them all this time..."  
  
The accusations became weaker though, as they strayed from his original point, and urSol did not bother with the last. "I am sorry... We should have known better, then, but we did not. And we can only hope to some how make amends..." His large, roughly calloused hand reached out and closed gently over top of skekSil's smaller fingers, more softly fleshed and sharply boned for lack of any hard life's work. Another shiver, stronger this time, passed through the Skeksis' shriveled form.

He felt the warmth of urSol's skin, the pulse of the slow, heavy heartbeat through the veins beneath the flesh, and felt as though it was a wall, as thick and indestructible as solid stone, between himself and something that he desperately desired. Beyond that flesh lay the thing, above any power or energy that he had ever sought outside it, that would bring him the wholeness, the completion he so needed. It would also bind him, as it once had, would curb his lusts and cruelty and perversions most infuriatingly...

But skekSil had never known any other love than with urSol, had never truly felt joy, or pleasure, or satisfaction. He had never known any true pride and peace at being, than when he and this creature next to him had been One, when they had completed one another. Silently he wondered, even though the part that was now urSol had desired their division, oh so many ages ago... did he also now feel the emptiness and incompletion of being that skekSil suffered with, every day and night of his miserable existence on this world?

"You must find a way back to the Castle, skekSil..."

The silence between them had gone on so long that when urSol spoke again it made the Skeksis start and draw away, as though his hand had been burnt. He wished he hadn't reacted so suddenly though, for as he was he could never reach out himself and seek that hand again. That contact was now lost to him, probably forever. Distrusting as ever though, once told this, he had to question, "Why...?"

"The Great Conjunction is at hand... And the Prophesy will be fulfilled, either for good or for ill; that cannot yet be said. But either way, you must be there..."

After a moment, skekSil nodded, he understood; Whether it was the Skeksis who triumphed over all, or not, if he was not among the nine when the Great Conjunction began it would spell out both their doom for certain. Their fates were entwined, indefinitely, no matter how long the both of them had sought to untangle their separate twines. In the end though, they were both but the fibers of the same thread.

skekSil was still certain of his own race's success, though. Despite the appearance of not one, but two Gelfling still alive upon the face of Thra, he had no doubt in his squirming mind that the Prophecy would be fulfilled in Skeksis' favor. In that event he imagined he would like to keep urSol with him at the Castle... It had been a shame that they had decreed their banishment before. The urRu had never been a threat in themselves after all, it had always been the Gelflings that the Skeksis truly had to fear, and once the conjunction was complete, they would be invulnerable... Yes, skekSil would like to have urSol with him then.

The corners of urSol's long mouth turned up slightly with the Skeksis' nod, a shadow of a long forgot expression that could not truly be called joy. "I'm sure you will be able to manage... You are a clever creature, skekSil, if nothing else. You will find a way..." He did not want to consider what steps might need to be taken for the other to find that way, but he understood that in these times of change, none of them could chose their steps easily. Most of them could only walk upon the paths that fate revealed to them.

As the Rose Sun began to add its pinkish hue to the lightening sky, urSol left the other and rejoined his fellows in the camp below. skekSil felt no bitterness in their parting this time, however; his mind was too full with the thoughts of his own return. He had to find the Gelfling who had escaped him in the night... Damned Garthim... But he would be the one to get there first this time, and perhaps when not so frightened by attack, those lovely creatures might take pity upon his wretched form. He could bring them to the Castle, under the pretense of peace. And if nothing else, he could take them by force. He might look frail, draped in tattered rags as he was, but he was still a formidable creature after all. Oh, yes, urSol was correct; he would find a way...

(The Dark Crystal and all its character are copyright property of Jim Henson Company, the novelization by A.C.H. Smith is copyright under Jim Henson Associates, Inc., a Holt Rinehart and Winston publication. This work is written in appreciation of these pieces and is not meant to infringe on those copyrights in any way. It has not, and may not be distributed for the purpose of profit. Unauthorized copying or distribution of this work is not permitted.)


End file.
